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Counters

Introduction

Some of the simplest computing devices made and sold are aids to counting. From ancient to early modern times, scribes performing calculations moved small stones or metal tokens along lines. More recently, mechanical counters have been widely used to count crowds and objects, and as parts of machines.

In the nineteenth century, several inventors patented mechanical counters. Patent models surviving in the Mathematics Collections at the National Museum of American History suggest the range of their concerns. Paul Stillman in 1854 and Daniel Davies and Edward Wright in 1876 patented improvements in rotary measures, such as were used in revolution counters for steam engines. In 1874, Alexander Atkinson patented a counting register to help track quantities of grain. As the amount of leisure time available to Americans increased, three inventors around 1880 saw fit to patent counters to keep score in games.

By the turn of the century, mechanical revolution counters were incorporated in laboratory apparatus, in factories using engines, in distance measures such as odometers, and in cash registers. Americans manufactured them and imported them from abroad. Government offices bought and made counters to compile statistics, and employers used them to figure out the bills and coins they needed to meet payroll. Of course counters were incorporated in a wide range of vehicles and meters. Handheld counters are used to this day to count people entering and leaving buildings and on public transit.

During the second half of the 19th century, steam engines played a growing role in American life. This U.S. Patent Office model is for a counter used to count the number of revolutions of a steam engine. Paul Stillman (about 1811-1856) was one of three brothers who ran the New York City machine shop Novelty Iron Works. He took a particular interest in steam gauges,manometers, steam indicators, and pyrometers.

In 1848 Stillman took out a patent for a device to measure the pressure of steam and the extent of the vacuum in steam boilers and engines. This invention won him recognition from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. The measuring device on this instrument was analog, not digital. In 1854 he patented this digital improvement in counting machines. The following year, he patented a water gauge for steam boilers. Stillman’s son, Francis H. Stillman, also became a distinguished mechanical engineer.

The patent model has a wooden base and sides, with a metal plate across the top with four windows in it. Underneath each window is a cogged metal wheel, with the digits from 0 to 9 around the rim. To the right, on the same shaft as the wheels, is a brass crank that fits through a fifth hole in the plate. Moving the crank forward advances the rightmost wheel by one and, if necessary, activates the carry mechanism.

A mark on a paper tag nailed to the frame reads: Paul Stillman (/) Appa’ for Registering Numbers (/) Dec 15th 1852. A mark on the back of the base reads: 11577 (/) L 1201-1208.

The Novelty Iron Works made and sold Stillman’s register before and after his death. An 1864 price list, included at the back of a new edition of his The Steam Engine Indicator, and the Improved Manometer Steam and Vacuum Gauges; Their Utility and Application, indicates that the registers then sold with dials in 8”, 10” and 13” sizes, and had prices of $65.00 to $75.00 apiece.

P. Stillman, The Steam Engine Indicator, and the Improved Manometer Steam and Vacuum Gauges; Their Utility and Application, New York: Van Nostrand, 1864, pp. 82-84, 94-95. Editions of this book appeared at least as early as 1851.

This roughly built wooden and metal device is the U.S. patent model for a counter patented by Alexander P. Atkinson of Vermont, Ill., on November 7, 1871. It has an open wooden frame, with a window at the front for viewing the registering wheels. The three wheels are mounted on a crosswise shaft, along with a fourth wheel, which drives the others. Lowering a crank on the right side of the frame moves the driving wheel and the rightmost registering wheel one unit back. Returning the crank upright moves the driving but not the registering wheel.

The wheels are wooden. The registering wheels are covered with paper bands around the edge which have the digits marked from 0 to 9. Screws are used as gear teeth in much of the mechanism. The device carries. According to the patent, the machine was intended for use in counting the number of bushels or other measures of grain that passed a given point.

This small U.S. Patent Office model for a counter has the shape of an old-fashioned door key, with a dial protruding from the middle. A screw attached to a nozzle links to a shaft and rotates the dial. The edge of this dial is divided into 100 parts, which are labeled by 10s. A fixed pointer screwed to the middle of the dial indicates its reading. A second nozzle is tied to the object. The object illustrates the patent for “An Improvement in Rotary Devices” (#182,177) taken out by Daniel Davis Jr. and Edward Wright on September 12, 1876. There is no patent model tag.

Daniel Davis Jr. (1844-1919) was the son of Massachusetts instrument maker Daniel Davis (1813-1887). The elder Davis retired from Boston to his home town of Princeton, Mass., in 1852 to farm. Some time after 1870, the younger Daniel Davis moved to Worcester, where he worked as a brass founder and took out a patent for water filters with one Benaiah Fitts.

Edward Wright was born in New York around 1834. He patented an improvement in pickers for looms in September 1867. He received another patent for improvement in self-acting mules for spinning in February 1870. In September 1876 Wright and Davis received the U.S. patent for improvement in rotary measures for which this object is the model.. Both men were then living in Worcester.

In the spring of 1877, to pay the interest on the public debt, the state of Virginia passed a law suggested by State Senator Samuel H. Moffett of Harrisonburg. Every liquor dealer and saloon in the state was to be equipped with a so-called Moffett register to record sales of liquor, allowing state tax collectors to know taxes due. This is an example of a Moffett register. Moffett and Otis Dean of Richmond received a patent for the device in 1877.

The counter has a black iron frame with a glass window in the front and a brass crank in the back. Two holes in the base allow the register to be fixed to a counter. Under the window are six dials, each of which can read any digit from 0 to 9. The dials are marked according to the decimal place of the digit. Turning the crank at the back an entire turn rings a bell and increases the setting on the tens dial (the rightmost). On the back is a covered keyhole. The case is locked and there is no key.

A mark inside the window above the dials reads: MOFFETT REGISTER. A mark on the outside of the front reads: ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS. Another mark there reads: No (/) 2872. The dials are labeled from left to right: 1 MILLION, 100 THOUSAND, 10 THOUSAND, 1 THOUSAND, 1 HUNDRED, TEN.

By 1878, use of the Moffett register reportedly was in decline.

References:

Samuel H. Moffett and Otis Dean, “Improvement in Alarm-registers for Use in Bar-rooms, &c.,” U.S. Patent 194,951, September 4, 1877.

“Virginia,” Appleton’s Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1877, ns, vol. 2, New York: Appleton, 1890., pp. 758-762.

This U.S. patent model for a board for keeping score in the game of cribbage has a wooden base, with six small brass plates attached along each of the sides. Each plate has two rows of five holes. These two sets of sixty holes are used for keeping score in a single game between two players.

At each end of the base is a smaller plate with four holes. These holes might be used in keeping track of game points in a match of five games. Four brass pins that fit in the holes in the plates are stored behind the brass plates at each end of the base.

At the center are two discs, which represent the patented part of the board. One is numbered clockwise from 0 to 9, the other is numbered counterclockwise. Both rotate counterclockwise. A brass pointer reaches across both discs to point to a digit on each one. The discs are used to keep track of games won. One is probably mounted incorrectly.

Charles B. Wessmann of Newbridge, N.J., patented the invention. U.S. Census records do not list someone by that name living in New Jersey near the time of the patent. There was a Charles B. Wessmann (1843-1888) who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., lived there for much of his life, and worked as a brass finisher. He committed suicide May 31, 1888. Whether this is the same Charles B. Wessmann who took out the patent is unclear.

References:

Charles B. Wessmann, “Improvement in Game-Counters,” U.S. Patent 204404, May 28, 1878. The patent shows both number wheels mounted with digits increasing clockwise.

This U.S. Patent Office model consists of four instruments similar to a Russian abacus. Each has a rectangular open wooden box, with metal rods that extend across the box and carry differing numbers of wooden beads. Wooden pieces divide the box into two or more compartments. Across the middle of each compartment is a flexible spring. Beads may be moved easily over the spring, but retain their position once moved. Two of the counters are specifically for use with games, one with two players and one with six. Another is divided into two sections for counting dollars and cents. The five rods in this device are numbered 0, 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000. The fourth counter has no wooden divider, and is intended for tallying from 0 to 99999.

A mark on all four parts reads: UNIVERSAL TALLY MFG. Co. A second mark on all four parts reads: WILLIAMSPORT, PA. The first two counters have a mark that reads: RECORD OF GAME. The third part is marked: DOLLARS (/) CENTS. A mark on the final part reads: TALLY.

According to the 1880 U.S. Census, Phillip Orth was born in Germany in about 1847. By 1880 he was living in Williamsport, Pa., with his wife and two sons. He worked as a bookkeeper.

This small and incomplete model from the U.S. Patent Office well illustrates the technology used to store information about patent models. Attached to the knob by red tape are two labels. The smaller tag records the entry of the model into the office on March 17, 1881. It indicates in pen the name of the inventor, Leroy B. Haff, the type of the invention (a game counter) and the date received. The front of the tag also is marked in pencil “issued.” The back of this tag also has the pen marks S 28482, 23 Div, and 84/1044.

A second tag, attached to the model by the same piece of red tape, is the patent tag. It has what appears to be a form number, as well as space for the patent number (242635), the patentee (here spelled Le Roy B. Haff), the subject of the patent (Game-Counter), and the date patented (June 7, 1881). Glued to the back of the tag is a printed summary of the drawing and claims. This is heavily damaged.

Haff’s invention was a small counter that recorded both points scored in a card game such as whist and the number of games won. Only the upper part of the model has survived.

The inventor, Leroy (or Le Roy) B. Haff of Englewood, N.J., was no doubt the silversmith Leroy B. Haff (1841-1893) who lived in Engelwood and was a partner in the New York firm of silversmiths, Dominick & Haff. He also took out a patent for a corkscrew in 1889.

Counting the number of revolutions of a shaft allowed steamship owners to gauge the distance between ports, helped gas companies measure the quantity of their product sold, and aided engineers seeking to determine when a steam pump would require fuel. Combined with a watch, revolution counters allowed one to measure the velocity of any number of machines.

Eugène Deschiens, whose business was active in Paris from 1866 until 1894, was an eminent manufacturer of revolution counters and velocity meters (known also as tachometers). An 1884 article on tachometers reported that his instrument was “so well known we need not describe it.” His devices won prizes at national and international exhibitions. They were used on ships of both the French and the British navies, as well as by a range of other manufacturers.

This small cylindrical instrument has brass sides, a glass top, and a metal bottom painted black. Under the glass are five windows, which show digits. Steel or German silver rods extend from opposite sides of the cylinder. A section of the case contains eight steel pieces that may be used to turn these rods and hence cause the counter to count. One of these has an ivory handle. The pieces are in different shapes, so that they will link to different mechanisms.

As the eminent British physicist James Clerk Maxwell pointed out in his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, it was important for 19th century scientists to count the number of turns of wire laid down in constructing galvanometer coils and similar electrical instruments. To do this, Maxwell used a string attached to a shaft turned by the same lathe that held the wheel on which the wire of the coil was wound. Nails helped count the turns of the shaft marked by the string. A device linked to the wheel measured the wire as it turned on the wheel to form the coil, detecting changes in circumference.

This instrument has a brass wheel 18 cm. in diameter. The wheel turns in a steel yoke with a wooden handle. According to the accession file, it was designed by James Clerk Maxwell for measuring the wire in a coil. It lacks a counting element and has no maker’s marks.

References:

Accession File 218174.

James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 2, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873, p. 314. Subsequent editions of the book contained the same image.

This portable revolution counter has a handle at one end. The point at the other end is pressed against the end of the axis of the shaft whose revolutions are counted. In between are two wheels. When the lower wheel turns once, the upper wheel moves one tenth of its circumference. The edges of both wheels are divided into 100 equal parts. Each tenth division is numbered.

The lower wheel is labeled: TENS. Its divisions are numbered clockwise from 0 to 9 on the inside, and counterclockwise from 0 to 9 on the outside. The upper wheel is labeled: HUNDREDS. Its divisions are numbered counterclockwise from 0 to 9 on the inside and clockwise from 0 to 9 on the outside. A spring disengages the wheels to allow zeroing.

A mark on the back of one wheel reads: A. Sainte (/) A Paris.

The end of the shaft has three attachments. The instrument also has a metal weight and fits into a velvet and satin-lined case.

By counting the number of revolutions of the shaft of a steam engine and knowing the steam pressure and the properties of the engine, steam engineers could compute the horsepower of the engine. A. Sainte patented a device for this purpose in 1877, and exhibited it at the Exhibition Universelle held in Paris in 1878. A form of the device was still being manufactured as late as 1903.